On Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, US and Pakistan really are on the same team

US and Pakistani interests do diverge in some areas, but combating Al Qeada isn't one of them. In fact, the speculation around Pakistan's complicity following the killing of Osama bin Laden is misplaced and harmful to our future cooperation with Pakistan, making us less safe.

ByTaha GayaMay 4, 2011

Washington — The recent killing of Osama bin Laden has engendered speculation about the possible complicity of the Pakistani state in harboring Mr. bin Laden. But that speculation is misplaced and harmful to our future counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan, making us less safe.

We must be very clear on where our strategic differences with Pakistan lie – and combating Al Qaeda is not one of them.

Pakistan may also seek to leverage the Haqqani network to ensure greater Pakistan-friendly Pashtun participation in any eventual Afghan national government that looks to incorporate and negotiate with former Taliban affiliates, while simultaneously providing Pakistan with a hedge against growing Indian influence in Afghanistan.

Here, US and Pakistani interests are one and the same: If 3,000 American lives demanded that bin Laden be brought to justice, so did the 30,000 Pakistanis killed or injured in the global war on terror since 9/11.

Countering doubts about Pakistani complicity

The disquieting doubts raised by well-meaning analysts revolve around one central theme – the location of bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.

The defense against Pakistan’s complicity starts – and should end – with President Obama’s remarks on the subject that “it’s important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.”

Pakistan’s provision of intelligence leading to the discovery of bin Laden is incompatible with allegations of complicity.

Further, even after the fact, the ISI admitted it was never aware of bin Laden’s location. “We were never able to put two and two together,” explained an ISI official, “It’s unfortunate but we did not know of the people resident in that compound.”

If CIA didn't know for sure, how could ISI?

To assess the credibility of this claim, and to address the ridiculous notion that the compound’s mere presence, size, and structures such as its exterior walls should have tipped off local Abbotabad residents and military personnel in the area that bin Laden was living within, it’s worth remembering that despite eight months of intensive monitoring by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGIA), and National Security Agency (NSA), nothing definitively confirmed that bin Laden was at the compound.

CIA Director Leon Panetta noted that even at the time of decision, the CIA was only 60 to 80 percent confident bin Laden was there at all.

In the words of Mr. Brennan describing the reaction in the Situation Room, “there was a tremendous sigh of relief that what we believed and who we believed was in that compound actually was in that compound and was found.”

We cannot afford to take risks with our ally

Because we had forewarned Pakistan that if we had actionable intelligence on bin Laden we would act unilaterally, we were able to take the risk that the Pakistani military would not retaliate. But these are risks we should not and cannot afford to take in the future: Having a situation in which an ally scrambles its fighter jets to prepare to confront helicopters loaded with our best Special Forces teams is an unsustainable way forward.

There are two facts around which there is complete unanimity: The cause of securing our country is not complete, and we will need Pakistan’s cooperation to complete it.

As Senator John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts put it yesterday, “If you want a radical Islamist government having possession of nuclear weapons and running Pakistan, then you can go off in a knee-jerk way that makes matters worse. I’m not making matters worse. And I think we have to be very thoughtful about this.”

But we must always remember that what that fundamentally means, beyond security cooperation and particularly in the Pakistan-Afghanistan context, is an emphasis on political solutions and helping the two nations institute the kind of effective governance that will provide their citizens with the benefits of “liberty and justice for all.”